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Search Engine Payola
Cranial Dome writes: "The top four portals -- MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and Terra Lycos -- all have search results tainted by their acceptance of money for listings, according to this article in the Washington Post. Of the top search engines and portals (including Alta Vista, Inktomi, and Lycos), only Google has vowed to NOT accept money from companies for guaranteed placement in search results. Another reason to love the Google thang."
Using Dogpile, which searches many of the popular search engines either have no matches or send me to somewhat unrelated stuff. (Wilshire 5000. Powerman 5000. Why?)
But on Google, I get 14 Slashdot post links, which seems a lot more relevant to the original search terms.
I guess sites like MP3.com have paid the other engines quite well. Gotta love Google and their text-matching-only searching.
In fairness, most portals attempt to separate their paid listings from their unbiased search results with labels. Terra Lycos calls paid links "sponsored sites," AOL "sponsored links." Netscape labels them more ambiguously "partner search results."
I use Yahoo! religiously. It is completely unequivocal about which hits are sponsored (read: bought) and which are not. Yahoo! uses Google for results not in their hierarchical database (though admittedly, not as powerful as using Google directly). This story is about as titillating as the fact Windows Media player caches a list of media you've played on YOUR machine (scandalous!). However, while I enjoy an opportunity to take MS down a notch with FUD, I will not stand for such abuse for my beloved portal, Yahoo!.
only Google has vowed to NOT accept money from companies for guaranteed placement in search results.
I think "vowed" is a bit strong of a word since Google does take money for (quote from that page) an enhanced text link appears at the top of the Google result page whenever the keyword or phrase you have purchased is searched for by one of our users.
Don't get me wrong, I've Google and have used them for a couple years (or however long, I'm honestly not sure), but I'm just pointing out that the statement fo vowed to not to accept money for guaranteed placement is drop dead wrong. Not even a streth, just dead wrong.
P.S. That enhanced text link they speak of can't (as far as I can tell) be opened in a seperate window. It forses the focal window to honor the link request...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
>"Yellow pages pay for the printing and distribution of white pages"
Sigh. Yeah, but the Yellow Pages are not called a "Search Engine". They are called a "Directory Listing". It's much more obvious to people that ads are ads, listings are listings, and none of the entries are there out of the goodness of the Yellow Page publishers' hearts.
A better analogy would be to 'merge' the yellow pages with the white pages. Assume there are 425,432 people named 'Mike Smith'. Finding Mike Smith's phone number is annoying. But now you have to deal with 500,000 more bought (even if indicated on the page) 'Mike Smiths'. Its not even so much that people are fooled into thinking commercial entries with non-commercial, but rather that the sponsorship of the product is getting in the way of the original intent of the product. In this case, now you have one million Mike Smith entries to check out. In the case of web searches, that page with the result you wanted might have been the 4th page without sponsored entries, but now it's on the 30th page.
There's nothing wrong with sponsorship, but everything wrong with it when it reduces the effectiveness of the product or service it's financially supporting. I mean, whats the point?
"Old man yells at systemd"
1) Before we cheer on the good corporate ethics of Google, let's remember that this is a company just like any other. Their goal is to make a profit, not benefit the community. Right now they'll profit more by not tainting their search results. But there's nothing to stop them from changing their minds and selling out later.
2) There's also nothing stopping another company from buying them out in the future and changing their advertisment/search results policy.
3) The article said that E-Bay pays 10-11 cents per click-through to their site. Why not write a script that repeatedly goes to the site through Yahoo? You'd tie up their bandwidth and cost them a fortune.
4) Lastly, what's to stop microsoft from paying top dollar for searches including the words "Linux," "open source," and "monopoly"?
Teaching, coding, coffee, revolution.
I work for a major hosting company for adult (yes, XXX) web sites. Our sites are very well ranked on all search engines. On some search engines, this is because we gave money (sometimes to be the only one to bring answers for specific keywords) . But we're also very well ranked on Google because of mass spamming.
99% of the pages we submit to Google aren't real sites. We buy a lot of domains (with explicit keywords) . Then, out of every domain, we do tons of subdomains with other keywords. All related web sites are different. But they only have one page, automatically generated by sets of scripts. These pages have randomly chosen keywords and pictures, and every fake site have links to a dozen of other fake sites. On all sites, there's only one link to a real site. A real user will immediately catch the right link (because it's a big picture, it has a caption like "click here to access the site", etc) . But search engines are crawling.
Googles gives better ranking to web sites that have a lot of other web sites linking it. So we abuse that. All our sites have excellent scoring because fake sites are referring other fake sites. It takes 10 minutes to automatically generate hundreds of fake sites. Apache's mod_rewrite is extensively used. We have an entiere team devoted to reading mailing-lists of search engine software (like ASPSeek... Google uses a lot of ASPSeek ideas), in order to abuse search engines.
So although Google's ranking doesn't depend on money, it isn't fair. It depends on how people are cheating with it.
PS: I don't support what the company is doing, it's a shame, and I'm looking for a new job.
{{.sig}}
But I, for one, am neither shocked nor appalled by this realization!
Search engines are essentially a very useful service provided to the public by for-profit companies at no direct cost to the individual - they are FREE! They are one of the few remaining offerings in the world that meet the 'something-for-nothing' criteria...
Of course, the companies that provide these services are not exactly doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They compete amongst the other search engines to win to win favor with the users and then turn their daily page hits into advertising dollars via banners, pop-up's and other such advertising... Now that web advertising has slowed with the rest of the world economy, how long did you truly think it would take before the parent companies and investors demanded further, less principled tactics to increase profits? Obviously, not long...
And here comes the stinger...I don't thing there is anything wrong with this. Ultimately, the companies that back search engines have a business to run - this requires revenue. No revenue, no search engines....and exactly where do you think that would leave us all in the jungle of information that is now the internet!
And as for Google, I applaud there adherence to morals and integrity. But don't think that if it comes down to it, they will not do whatever is necessary (including accepting money for search placement) to stay afloat in tough economic times. And I would want them too - a slightly corrupt Google is better than no Google at all!!!
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
a slightly corrupt Google is better than no Google at all!!!
A slightly corrupt Google ceases to be Google. I can see no reason why Google would have to mix its sponsored links with the rest of the results.
Will I retire or break 10K?
That's what we need! More laws!
Laws passed where? Your local city council? County legislation? State? Federal? Global? Enforcable how?
We don't need laws. We don't need regulations. We don't need to chase down unscrupulous "search engine" providers who muck with their results to prefer their sponsors.
The 'Net is a funny thing... since it's SO easy to get from one search engine to another (as opposed to say, only being able to buy milk at the one supermarket in town), people will naturally migrate towards the one that suits them best. That might be something like Google that tends NOT to preference their sponsors, or something like Yahoo that does. But we certainly don't need laws to "protect" the surfing public.
Caveat emptor.
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
No one complains about this practice. There's no doubt that the more you pay, the more prominently you're displayed. How is this different than a search site? In fact, the YP is even worse than the search sites. If you don't pay at all, you're given a crap listing in the White Pages. You don't even turn up in a search by category.
I guess you could argue that a search site is supposed to return the most relivant sites first. Or, at least, people might think that. But, one could argue that a search should return the sites that most useful or at least somewhat useful.
Or, you could look at it this way: without ad revenue, there would be no search site at all, and that would be worse, right?
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
It feels unethical to me for a search engine to take money for top spots. I'm not saying it should be illegal, don't get me wrong - I'm as libertarian as the next guy - but it feels somewhere between sleazy and fraudulent.
Imagine if you called directory assistance and asked for the number for Burger King, and they instead gave you the number for McDonalds (since McDonalds paid a hefty sum), and then only after a pause gave you Burger King's number. Or if Channel 5 listed the top ten films at the box office, and showed you all Paramount films as being at the top (since Paramount paid Channel 5). It's dishonest.
So what can we do about it? Use Google instead. And click their ads occasionally.
Don't blame me; I voted for CowboyNeal.
Almost every one of the search engines mentioned makes a very clear distinction between paid placements and search results. This is not about Yahoo sprinkling paid placement links in its search results and pretending they're real. Even the worst offender, Dogpile, lists results by search engine, rather than pretending they're all real searches from the same source.
Yes, they could be clearer, but this isn't nearly as bad as the hysterical submitter wants you to believe. In some ways, it's good. Do a search for Ted Bundy on Yahoo and you'll see a paid link to our site (not gonna tell you which one). Of the people who click that link, most end up pretty happy because we've got some cool stuff.
Overture is the company that puts must of these paid links in searches; we pay them, they pay Yahoo. Overture's standards for search terms are breathtaking - I've spent over a month arguing with them about search terms which are exactly applicable to what we're selling. They go out of their way not to be deceptive.
Of course Google will say that Overture's not a real search engine - Google's competing with them for the same market. Hello! Google isn't some great white knight, immune from the evils of capitalism. They're the best search engine by far, but their AdWords program sucks ass compared with Overture's. This whole article reads like a Google press release. Contrary to what they say, it's much much easier to get a deceptive ad in Google AdWords than in Overture (not that we've tried - it would be a waste of money).
Unless I'm looking to buy something, I avoid Overture and all the sites they sell ads to. If I am looking to buy something, Overture is a great tool to start. For knowledge, and obscure or very specific searches, of course, nothing beats Google.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
That's like saying "people still use AOL? why?" Because they don't know better. Think about it - paid placement works because the "average" user doesn't realize it is an ad. These sites aren't targeting the tech-savvy user. We
- research something before we buy it.
- don't trust the media or corporations
- circument ads, tracking technologies, etc.
- look for the best price once we identify what we are buying
And most importantly, for every 10 of us, there are 2 million new internet users who
- click on the first link they see
- believe what the ads have to say
- want to buy from a company name they have heard of (like "AOL" or "MSN")
- think "special offers" are really special (because their mommy said so).
RC
Absolute crock of horse shit.
This is what pisses me off about paid listings. The companies assume everyone on the internet is searching for something to buy.
We aren't. Some of us, dramatic pause, actually search for information. You know, the stuff that is useful in our lives.
Overture is nothing more than a very cool, very specific, very targeted shopping index. That's it.
Perhaps it could be done with WinNT, but that's not the point.
The point is that Linux is scalable and robust enough to actually do the job. Many would have contested that at one point.
Another point is that the total cost in OS software licenses for 4000+ nodes is $0.00. Let's see Microsoft match that one! ;-)
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I noticed. Needless to say, I only use links from my favorite free website. I no longer use a search engine as I have found the result worthless. (I'm not giving a credit card, email or phone number to anyone in that industry.) What you are doing is the best block to keep underage kids out of porn. Good job. It's just like a spam tarpit for underage kids. They can't find the free uncensored previews easly anymore.